# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 5 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-nvfp4
- Last updated: September 24, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 6
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.7

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Claude Sonnet 5 leads overall 67.01 to 19.1.
- The clearest category separation is in agentic, where the averages are 64.2 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 7.3 for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench 2.1 in Agentic, with scores of 80.4% and 23.5%.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Sonnet 5 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | NVIDIA |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 67.01 | 19.1 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 26 | 13 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $2.00 / $10.00 | $0.00 / $0.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.2 (Supported · #12/105)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 7.3 (Estimated · #104/105)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 14.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 80.4% | 23.5% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| BrowseComp | 84.7% | 36.8% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HLE w/ tools | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 81.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 74.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ApprenticeBench | 16% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| PinchBench | Coming soon | 83.4% | Coming soon |
| τ³-bench results | Coming soon | 9.5% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 60.8 (Supported · #15/135)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 11.4 (Estimated · #135/135)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 85.2% | 52.8% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 63.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multilingual | 78.3% | 36.5% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE Multimodal | 28.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 80.4% | 23.5% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 42.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench32 | 61.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench CII v1 | 89.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 79.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench40 | 34.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SciCode | Coming soon | 31.4% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 78.4 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 55.9 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.4 (#15/50)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 88.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.5 (Supported · #23/158)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 20.7 (Estimated · #154/158)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | 43.2% | 10.5% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HLE-Verified | 31.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LABBench2 | 80.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 88.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA | Coming soon | 75.6% | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 75.6% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | Coming soon | 81.6% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 68.5 (#67/124)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | Coming soon | 72.9% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 5 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4?

Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 5 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4?

The widest category gap is in agentic, where the averages are 64.2 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 7.3 for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Sonnet 5 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Sonnet 5 currently has 26 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 cover on BenchLM?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 currently has 13 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-nvfp4)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-claude-sonnet-5)
- [Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-nvfp4)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 5 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-5)
- [Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 profile](/models/nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-nvfp4)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)